A team of scientists was able to sedate a large, free-swimming whale for the first time this month, allowing the disentangling of hundreds of feet of rope that was impeding the animal from migrating.
The 7-year-old endangered North Atlantic right whale, known to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers as No. 3311 or “Bridle,” was first spotted in trouble Jan. 14. Experts made four attempts to rescue it over the next month and a half. But it was only after a team from NOAA Fisheries and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute successfully sedated the whale March 6 that scientists were able to pull off a significant amount of rope.
Jamison Smith, NOAA Fisheries large whale disentanglement coordinator, managed to shoot two separate darts containing the equivalent of two cups of sedative into the animal’s back end from a boat more than 50 feet away. After an hour and 15 minutes, scientists were able to approach the whale, which had been evasive before.
Smith said the whale did not stop swimming or breathing as a result of the sedative, which pierced its blubber and entered its muscle. “It just didn’t care that we were right next to it,” he said, adding that rescuers pulled off 90 percent of the rope entangling the animal over the course of multiple attempts. “As soon as we pulled the rope off it, you could tell it really picked up speed.”
A record number of right whales — five — have become entangled in fishing gear off the East Coast this calving season, but a coalition of federal and state officials, working in concert with private researchers, have been able to free four of them.
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